


Codicil

by Infinitely_Stranger



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Aging, Angsty Schmoop, Bees, Happy Ending, Love, M/M, Retirement, also sad ending, because that's life isn't it, but happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 00:39:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9631985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infinitely_Stranger/pseuds/Infinitely_Stranger
Summary: The sun sets on a cottage in Sussex.  John reflects on the years.  Sherlock reflects on John.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of the first cohesive things I wrote in this fandom. It's slightly angsty, I apologise. It's also, I suspect, slightly trope-tastic, but here it is, nonetheless.

He spent a lot of time in Sussex now, in Sherlock’s cottage, with the bees. His old chair was there, still somehow kicking through the years (‘chair's almost as faded as I am’ he’d joked). He liked it still, it was short, like him, especially now that he was older, he’d started the inevitable shrinking process.

 It’s a funny thing, human memory, he often thought. That old blog he’d kept through the years had led to publishing deals, and his last bit, the _Memoirs_ had kept him coming here. There were stories they shared, he and Sherlock, and then others, ones from before he had been there, ones from when he hadn’t been around. Hours and hours of storytelling of laughter and honeyed tea (mainly Sherlock’s – John didn’t abide by sweet tea, but he’d have the honey on occasion to humour his friend). So many stories, so many words, so many times he’d watched the light of the day move round his friend’s face, afternoon softening into evening, the different hours of the day flickering across the smile lines, and surprise lines and ‘oh!’ deduction lines now etched on his companion’s face. Wherever they were, in the folding chairs out in the garden, or on the sofa when the weather wasn’t fair, you started to feel like the universe was moving around him, and that made John laugh – that’s how Sherlock had always thought it worked, wasn’t it, sun going round the earth. So maybe the universe had really fallen into place now.

It was a comforting thing, the hum of bees, John’s grip flexing and unflexing on the arm of the chair, or his cane – not the psychosomatic limp anymore, but years and years of running down streets, and up stairs, and falling down stairs, and chasing after children, and criminals, and primarily Sherlock, took its toll on your old joints after a while. He was a doctor, he should know.

 Comforting was the word, homely.1 Sometimes it felt like he’d never left. All that time in between the stories – the ones he’d written, the ones they shared – that time started to blend together after all the years, like it wasn’t important. He thought of Sherlock’s method of deleting all the bits that didn’t pertain to cases, all the unimportant, uninteresting bits. _I guess we all do that a little, eh?_ Not that any of it wasn’t interesting. It had been good, and he felt almost full to the brim with happiness, happiness being a sort of golden thing, like a jar of honey, actually. Yeah, he’d take that metaphor, and Sherlock could grumble about it as much as he’d like. Hell, they both knew the grumbling was just another part of it. Of fun, life, appreciation, friendship, love.

 John thought about it sometimes, when he was sitting in that chair, tried to think about it – where he’d been in the years in between. On occasion, what might have been different. It seemed silly now, with the amount of time they’d spent together, that he’d never just settled in to stay. It felt silly, after all these years, even now, that there were still certain things you didn’t say, things that you now realised you might never say (mightn’t you) now that the end of things wasn’t that far off. There was still a bit of time, but what would be the point? Not much changing now, and they’d had a happy life.

No, it was better this way, best this way, really. They had had the very best of times together as friends, and John was full and golden with it.

 They were in the sitting room now. Sherlock on the couch, a partial lounge (his back not what it used to be) and John in his chair. He flexed and unflexed his hand on his cane. Perhaps he should get going but…

Funny thing, human memory. Things were starting to get a bit slippery nowadays, sometimes he’d be thinking, and things would just slip on out. Train of thought derailed, disappeared like a lost tube car, gone to a station that had never existed. He remembered that, that case.

 He and Sherlock had been talking. Well, Sherlock had, just now. John had been watching dusk fall across his friend’s face. The sky behind him in the window was rosy, with a sort of lilac colour now across the fields, a late spring sunset. This was the kind of light that made the years fuzzy, blended the past with the present, reminded him even of the first times they’d spent together.

 Sherlock stopped talking, and looked at him. Smiled a little, kind, expecting. ‘What?’

 ‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘No, but you were thinking it. I can hear it you know. Always could, still can.’

John smiled, hell why not? ‘Just thinking… don’t know why I didn’t just stay here. All those years. Pretty plain as day I should’ve. Guess I am a bit of an idiot after all.’

 There was something that flickered across Sherlock’s expression. Concern, affection, understanding… was it… sadness? Even? Maybe not. It was hard to tell in the light. Then he smiled. It was a kind smile again, not the manic one. He got up, walked over to John and put a hand on his shoulder. John looked up at him. ‘I suppose I should get going. Getting’ late.’

Sherlock exhaled, his expression still that bittersweet mix.

 John thought he ought to say something, finished the thought he’d had before, before it slipped away. What was it? Ah yes, there it was, ‘I guess I was just thinking, what would’ve it been like if I’d stayed here with you all along?’

…

_It was heartbreaking, really, Sherlock thought. He might’ve accompanied it, once, by a ‘which is why it would’ve been better without all that emotion carp,’ but that proverbial ship had sailed its proverbial years ago, and he couldn’t in all honesty say he’d regretted the change. Certainly couldn’t do anything about it, though he’d definitely tested a number of suppressive methods back when he’d been younger. Obviously they hadn’t worked. Still had the tiny scars from the needles, even now, and he’d hoped those would have faded a bit, those episodes were really primarily embarrassing in hindsight. Not that he’d be caught dead admitting it out loud._

_Heartbreaking, but then that was evidence that he’d had a heart to break in the first place, and that he’d experienced enough happiness to regret its passing, and that was something that, fifty years ago, he never thought he’d say._

_Loss. It was a funny thing, human memory. All of his, the mind palace, still there, more or less, a bit faded, a few rooms thinner around the edges than they used to be. He wished he could give it to John, it’d be more use to him now, although Sherlock also knew it would no doubt serve him as well in the end, the very end. You didn’t have to be a genius to see where things were going, but he was, and he also saw, and he couldn’t do anything about it. He should probably tend to the other rooms, but he really couldn’t be arsed. He was old, after all, and had never liked housework in the first place. Certain rooms were in excellent repair though. The John rooms, mainly. The John wing, he should say. They were kept up in a manner you might call ‘attentive’, if you were uncreative, ‘obsessive’, if you were a cynic, and ‘lovingly’ if you actually knew how to observe. Sherlock knew it might be painful to visit them someday, he was sometimes terrified of how it would feel if the true author of these rooms, the model upon which the imprints were made was... no more. But Sherlock had always taken a kind of comfort in facts, in data, and it would still be soothing, somehow, remembering._

_John had written Sherlock’s memoirs, compiling their adventures in a manner the unobservant might again call attentive or obsessive, but the observant…well. John had done that, and Sherlock had crafted John a wing. He thought about writing it down sometime. John had preserved their adventures for posterity – he was no longer the sole keeper, sole treasurer of Sherlock’s stories. However, Sherlock was the only treasurer of John now, of all the small things and insubstantial expressions that were irreplaceable. It had started perhaps as a solution to the puzzle, so many years ago – the puzzle being how John could manage to be so ordinary and yet so surprising – but it had ceased to be that long ago, and was now a catalogue of him. Lest we forget. Sometimes Sherlock felt the world deserved to know, that they had to know, had to be told of the brilliance of John. Other times, when he was feeling more mellowed, he admitted that it only really mattered to him, that it could not matter to any one in the same way that it mattered to him, that no one, not even John’s daughter, appreciated John the way Sherlock did. Part of that was, of course, Sherlock’s particular method of appreciation (scientific, exacting, obsessive) the rest was just the way things had always been._

_It was heart-breaking though. John was a doctor, so he should’ve known, should’ve seen. Well, he had seen, for a while, he had known, and it had terrified him. That had meant a lot of nights up, and even Sherlock needed sleep nowadays. There had even been tears, and there had been John’s push to finish the Memoirs before it was too late. But then things had progressed, and he didn’t recognise it anymore. The anxiety was still there, the feeling like things might be slipping, but the thing was, he no longer remembered what it was that had been lost. Long term memory still intact, short term memory starting to grow thin and flake away like old film. Sherlock hoped he’d arrived on the scene soon enough to never completely disappear, he was fairly certain he’d made that much of an impression. Even if he hadn’t, he’d be here, he’d be present. He was determined to be._

_Yes, he’d be there, even when the minute-to-minute things started to get lost. Someday, when he left the room to make tea, John would ask for him, ask where he was, ask if they had a case. John worried about him all the time, even now, wanted him around, in earshot, if not within sight._

…

‘I guess I was just thinking, what would’ve it been like if we’d lived together all along?’

Sherlock closed his eyes for a moment. It was getting easier, but never easy. It would never be easy. He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder, looked down into the old man’s face that looked back at him so trustingly.

 He bent down and kissed the top of John’s head. He wondered if sometime in the months to come John wouldn’t even remember he could do that, wouldn’t even remember that Sherlock _wasn’t_ so much of a sociopath after all.

 ‘Stay. The bedroom’s yours whenever you want to sleep.’

He knew how it would go. Soon, he’d lead John to the bedroom. John would make some crack, something about how it was almost like he lived there already. He’d get ready for bed. He’d ask Sherlock to stay with him, just until he was asleep (‘bloody nightmares’) or keep him talking, keep talking until sleep took him, so he didn’t leave. Sherlock might leave for a bit. There was the violin, despite the arthritis. There were the hives, and the sky (the stars out here in the country were nice, even if technically pointless). Then he’d come back. Come back to the bedroom. _Their_ bedroom. Crawl onto his half of the bed, curl around John, watch his breathing, his silver hair in the moonlight, the creases and fissures in his expression that no amount of dreaming could erase now. John would turn towards him in his sleep, he always did. If Sherlock put his arm around him, John’s hand would find his, hold onto it until morning.

 Tomorrow, it would be thirty five years since John moved in with him for the last time. He had never moved out.

 Sherlock put his arm over John, pulled him closer, hand over his heart. He could feel his pulse, always a good heart that. John sighed. ‘Sherlock?’

‘I’m here, John.’

‘Good. Stay.’

His short, rough fingers twined through Sherlock’s long ones, both grown knobby with the years. These were the hands that had killed for each other, that had held each other as they ran through streets, had taken pulses, held each other when the world had bottomed out.

‘I will. I always do.’

 The east wind blows through the Sussex fields, but all is quiet in the cottage with the bees.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes  
> 1) I believe this is what the New Worlders amongst you would call 'homey'. As in home-like. Cosy. Holmes-like. You know.


End file.
